The literature is replete with products capable of cleaning hard surfaces such as ceramic tile floors, hardwood floors, counter tops and the like. In the context of cleaning floors, and in particular in the context of cleaning floors with a cleaning solution, numerous devices are described comprising a handle rotatably connected to a mop head having retaining means for maintaining an absorbent cleaning pad attached during the cleaning operation. One example of such retaining means can be found in the SWIFFER WETJET® cleaning implement, sold by The Procter & Gamble Company, and which includes hook fasteners, which are located at the bottom surface of the mop head. These hook fasteners can conveniently engage and retain loop fasteners located on a top surface of a cleaning pad. Other examples of such retaining means can be found in the SWIFFER® cleaning implement, sold by The Procter & Gamble Company, the CLOROX® READY-MOP® cleaning implement, sold by The Clorox Company and on the GO-MOP™ cleaning implement, sold by the S.C. Johnson Company, which all have slitted attachment structures located on the top of the mop head. These deflectable slitted structures can engage at least a portion of a cleaning pad and, as a result, can retain a cleaning pad about the mop head of the implement.
These cleaning implements can be viewed as “pad specific” in the sense that they can only be used with cleaning pads which have retainable means corresponding to the type of retaining means used with a particular cleaning implement.
The “pad specificity” of each cleaning implement can be a source of confusion for consumers who already own a cleaning implement, and wish to purchase additional pads for use with their cleaning implement. For example, a consumer who has purchased a cleaning implement having deflectable slitted structures, might mistakenly purchase refills of cleaning pads having loop fasteners and realize that this type of cleaning pad cannot be effectively attached to this type of implement.
It is therefore one object of this invention to provide a cleaning pad which can be used with a variety of cleaning implements independently of the retaining means of the cleaning implement.
In addition, it has been observed that cleaning pads which are originally designed to be used with a cleaning implement having slitted structures, typically have attachment wings which can be mechanically engaged by the slitted structures located on the top surface of a mop head. These attachment wings can be made of low cost fibrous materials. Despite the presence of grabable fibers in these type of materials, the attachment wings are not suitably designed to stay attached to hook fasteners of an implement and tend to detach from the mop head either during the cleaning operation or when the user “lifts” the mop head from the floor surface. While “specialized loop” materials are available on the market, these are relatively expensive and can substantially increase the manufacturing cost of the pads.
It is therefore another object of this invention to provide an improved cleaning pad which does not get prematurely detached from the mop head by having suitable loop fastener materials as well as proper design configurations.